Make your newsletter signup appealing

By
Angie Herrera

More and more small businesses are joining the ranks of bigger companies by keeping in touch with their customers via email marketing. And it's a great trend that I don't expect to see slow down any time soon. After all, what's not to love? It's highly targeted, affordable marketing. However I do see some not-so-great implementations of the sign up form on small business' websites. Here are a few examples (click on any of them to view larger version). Notice anything missing from these? Keen eyes would note that not a single one of these makes a note of one important thing: *how often the email can be expected to be received.* ### Why this is important People are, more now than ever, protective of their email inboxes. So not only will they be super-cautious about they sign up for, they will want to know how often they can expect to hear from you / your organization. After all, who wants an email newsletter every day when there are [clearly better things to do](http://www.portlandtimbers.com/)? Some of the examples above don't even tell the user what sort of information they can expect in their inbox once they do start receiving emails. Will it be tips? Recipes? Announcements? News about the company? Discounts? So, when including a subscribe form on your site, make it clear what the email will be about and how often you're going to send it. Not only will you be saving people time, you'll be further targeting your audience.